Hackaday Prize Entry: Safety Glasses Are Also Hands-Free Multimeter

It seems like the multimeter is never easy to see during a project. Whether it’s troubleshooting a vehicle’s electrical system and awkwardly balancing the meter on some vacuum lines and the intake manifold, or installing a new solar panel and hoping the meter doesn’t fall on the ground while the leads are in both hands, it seems like there’s never a good way to see the meter while actually using it. Some meters have a small magnet and strap that can be used to hang them temporarily, but this will only get you so far.

[Alain Mauer]’s entry into the Hackaday Prize looks to solve this glaring problem. Using a heads-up Bluetooth display mounted to a pair of safety glasses, a multimeter can be connected to the device in order to display its information directly to its user. Based on his original idea which used a normal pair of prescription glasses as its foundation, [Alain]’s goal is to reduce safety hazards that might arise when using a multimeter in an awkward or dangerous manner that might not otherwise be possible.

The device uses an Arduino Pro Micro to connect to the multimeter and drive the display. [Alain] notes that the real challenge is with the optical system, however. Either way though, this would be a welcome addition to any lab, workspace, or electrician’s toolbox. Be sure to check out the video of it in action after the break.

There’s been a lot of work in the past several years in the high-end repair world (Aircraft, BMW etc) with devices like this that also show video overlays of parts/schematics, exploded diagrams etc. etc.

Bringing it “down to earth” for the average guy would be a great step forward.

Great work. Having it separate from the glasses helps as those of us who wear glasses can still use them unlike the stupid google glass design. With this you could attach it to the brim of the hardhat if needed.

Other than jamming the meter in your pocket this is an awesome idea. It seems like I am in a constant battle with my meter to read the display at odd angles on in the 40 second windows it will leave the backlight activated. I would definitely put money down on a crowdfund for this type of display.

For me this is perfect solution. Most of the time I have no good anchor point for my meter to hang. And fluke display contrast is worse than dt-830. This solves all. The question is why it’s not already done? Removable display in fluke products looks so ’90s comparing to this.j

Not sure which point I missed,could you explain please? I was trying to get the meter out of his pocket in case anything goes wrong ie magnetically mount it with long enough leads to reach. He would still be using the hand free display. The panel should be IP2x which should stop his fingers contacting live terminals but his probe are exposing the live voltage.

I have a device called a Testofon. It came out in the 70’s or even earlier.
It beeps in a frequency that is directly dependent of the amount of current flowing. It doesn’t even have an on/off button, but can measure resistances from 10ohm to 1 Megaohm, can be used to measure capacitance (1µF to somewhat over 10000µF, even ESR and leakage current), voltages (DC only, AC is harder), diodes, transistors (not really, but you can pretty reliably check if the transistor you’re testing is shot) and very large inductors.
The software to determine the measurement’s results will auto-install on your brain after a few hours of use.

Lost a track on a large circuit board? Hold one lead to the pin you want to know where it goes and quickly move the other lead over all the other pins of all the other chips. You can do about 10 pins per second with this thing.